Check out the latest version of CIRIA’s B£ST – a tool for valuing the multiple benefits of blue-green infrastructure. Free to download

CIRIA has developed a free tool and guidance, B£ST (Benefits Estimation Tool – valuing the benefits of blue-green infrastructure) for use on PCs. It makes assessing the benefits of blue-green infrastructure easier, without the need for full scale economic inputs. B£ST was first produced and released in 2015 and it has been updated in 2019.

B£ST is used to assess and monetise many of the financial, social and environmental benefits of blue-green infrastructure. The results enable users to understand and quantify the wider value of SuDS and natural flood management measures. This can support investment decisions and can help to identify stakeholders and find potential funding routes.

The current version of the guidance supersedes the original (2015) version. The key changes are presented in the table below.

The usability of B£ST has been improved, it follows a simple structure that begins with coarse screening and qualitative assessments to quickly identify the benefits to evaluate further. It then provides support to help quantify and monetise each benefit. On completion of the evaluation, the tool provides a series of graphs and charts to present the benefits based on Ecosystem Services (ESS) and Triple Bottom Line (TBL) criteria. In the future it will also provide Natural Capital accounting.

Downloads

Please be aware some of these free downloads require logging in, or registration into the CIRIA website. To download the tool, please follow the instructions and “Add to Cart”.

Tools

W047a B£ST: Benefits Estimation Tool – Valuing the benefits of blue-green infrastructure (Release 4. 1 12/02/19)
W047c B£ST: Comparison Tool – Enables the comparison of more than one assessment (Release 3.01 12/02/19)